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About 10 a.m. we were off Tarafal Bay a most hopeless-looking place for supplies. High rocky mountains, sandy slopes, and black volcanic beach, composed a scene of arid desolation, in the midst of which was situated one small white house, with four windows and a thatched roof, surrounded by a little green patch of sugar-canes and cocoa-nut palms.
She sat down near the window and gazed dreamily into space. She could generally see the village, with its sunken cottages and thatched roofs all covered with moss, and the new brick walls of the fine-looking inn through the open yard door as in a frame, but to-day there was nothing to be seen. Everything was hidden by the driving snow-flakes. Oh, what a storm, what a lot of snow!
Upon this floor are placed other posts or pillars, that Support a roof of sloping sides, which meet in a ridge at the top, like those of our barns: The eaves of this roof, which is thatched with palm-leaves, reach within two feet of the floor, and overhang it as much: The space within is generally divided lengthwise into three equal parts; the middle part, or centre, is enclosed by a partition of four sides, reaching about six feet above the floor, and one or two small rooms are also sometimes taken off from the sides, the rest of the space under the roof is open, so as freely to admit the air and the light: The particular uses of these different apartments, our short stay would not permit us to learn, except that the close room in the centre was appropriated to the women.
In a bay on the west coast of this island, the seamen took several kinds of fish in great plenty, such as skate, olaves, pilchards, and some others. On this island many good houses were seen, all of timber and thatched, each having a square inclosure and a clean well beaten path to the shore.
We were rounding a lofty headland crowned with groves of cocoa-palms and bananas and with trailing skirts of flowers and vines, when we saw ahead of us a pretty little bay, and on the shore a human being plainly not a Polynesian. Up the hillside that rose suddenly from the beach was a thatched dwelling, not built open all round like most native houses, and apparently having but one doorway.
Perhaps the meaning is that it was thatched with rushes, or possibly the expression refers to a mode of building sometimes adopted in the earlier stages of civilization, in which straw, or rushes, or some similar material is mixed with mud or clay to help bind the mass together, the whole being afterward dried in the sun.
But oh, the freedom of being nobody, and of having nothing to think of or do! And everything I see and hear gives me joy; a lark rising from the turf, and carolling its little self up into the blue; the great Atlantic breakers, pounding upon the shore; the fisher-folk, standing at the doors of their picturesque thatched cottages.
One of the few peaceful camping-grounds between Marrakesh and Mazagan was at a little distance outside an Arab village of about thirty little pointed thatched huts, enclosed within a zareba of thorn-bushes: it was called Smeera.
They reported that they had travelled twelve leagues up the country, where they came to a town of fifty pretty large houses, all constructed of timber in a round form and thatched with straw, resembling so many tents or pavilions. According to their estimation, this place might contain 1000 inhabitants, as all that belonged to one family dwelt together in one house.
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